9 ways Facebook can get you fired

We have probably all heard a story or two about someone who has been fired for doing ridiculously stupid things on Facebook, like calling in sick and then posting drunken photos of themselves in compromising positions onto their feed, being careful to tag themselves freely and maybe even referencing the fact they were meant to be at work.

Stupid. You are all thinking it, and we all agree someone that dumb probably doesn’t have a right to the air we breathe, let alone a job that gives them actual money.

However, you may not be aware that this is only one instance on a broad spectrum of scenarios that could see you getting fired thanks to good old facie-bee. And not all of them require you to be of the less-than-10-braincells variety moron. Some of them may even blow your mind. YES, BLOW YOUR MIND!

So in order to save you from your future unemployment, I’m here to give you a quick run-down of all the things you need to avoid doing on Facebook lest you lose your crappy job (I’m just assuming it’s crappy but it applies even if your job is awesome).

1. First of all, you shouldn’t have your Facebook posts set to ‘public’, because more people (such as your bosses, the creepy guy in IT and the bitchy girl in the next cubicle) can see all the stuff you’re saying. Sadly you can still get fired from posting things if your profile is private, but at least it gives you lower odds. Also, it makes it harder for your professional contacts to find out that you are actually moonlighting as a stripper at nights (explains the fishnets in your top draw though).

3. Don’t say anything about your colleagues or boss or workplace on the network either. Unless it’s so utterly ridiculously clearly positive that there is no chance it could be misconstrued as sarcastic, negative or offensive. It turns out that most people don’t like having negative things said about them – not even publicly on Facebook. So if you do this, you may get fired for harassment or bullying or just being a gossip. It makes no difference if your profile is private and you posted said rant during your own time on your own computer. In fact, there have been a number of cases in Australia where decisions to fire staff due to ‘bullying’ posts were upheld by the courts. So there’s more proof that it can get your arse FIRED. Believe it. 12 Virgin Airlines hostesses realised their mistake after being fired for discussing engine maintenance and cockroach infestations on FB. Nice one.

This one is even more important in Australia, where the right to free speech is not as ingrained as it is in the US – SMH has reported a couple of cases from the last couple of years, when roads worker Alec Armstrong was sacked after commenting on Facebook that the council had too many office staff and not enough workers. Jane Morgan was fired from her job at a construction management company in Sydney in 2009 after she wrote a message on a friend’s Facebook wall saying the company “sucks”.

And let’s not forget this old favourite…

4. Don’t try to be funny, when it relates to your work, your customers or your colleagues. (on Facebook). How many people have been fired for hilarious stories about customers on Facebook? Only about ten billion. I’m pretty sure had I had facebook when I was working in the aisles of Woolworths I would have been fired ten thousand times over. Customers SUCK and so do most of the people you work with, but if you’re going to post funny stories, photos etc you may find yourself out of a job. Take for example this teacher, who landed in hot water for listing “teaching chitlins in the ghetto of Charlotte” in her interests section.

6. Do not be racist. Or homophobic. Or any other prejudiced term. A youth football coach got dumped after posting on his Facebook wall “I was dining in an Asian buffet today (big surprise), and I heard this morning how Asian students are suppodely so much smarter than American kids. My personal observation is that those fishheads still eat with chopsticks. It took Western ingenuity to invent the fork. I’m just saying. … they ain’t that friggin’ smart.” Neither are you mate, so it would seem.

8. Think before you check-in during work time (or when you’ve called in sick). If you’re meant to be in the office, it’s probably smartest not to check into the movies or the brothel down the road. Though social media is establishing the need for us to broadcast to all and sundry what we are doing with every minute of the day, you should probably stop to think if there are people – like your boss (or your partner) who wouldn’t be happy about that particular nugget of information.

9. Do not spend all your work time on Facebook. This has also been known to get people fired in the past. If Facebook is up on your screen every time your boss walks past, it’s not looking good for your company future. Unless, of course, you’re me or any other person who is lucky (and awesome) enough to be paid to work on Facebook.

Sackings thanks to social media are on the rise, particularly within companies with over 1,000 employees. It’s happening all around us and it’s only likely to continue to increase as we spend more and more time on our networks telling more and more people about everything we are doing. Not only is it getting people sacked, but it’s making it harder for them to get jobs in the future as well. I know I’m guilty of a few of these things, and most likely you have found yourself relating to a bunch of them too. I’m pretty sure one of my Facebook friends (you know who you are… Ryan) is guilty of every single one of them. So all I’m saying is think twice and exercise a bit of caution next time you hit that post button.

If you have any other stories of yourself or others being fired (or disciplined) thanks to Facebook, please share them with the group. I’ll give you a gold star!

Community Answers

Even if your profile is marked private you should still be very careful of what you post. Some of your co worker “friends” are telling the boss everything on your page. The boss may not ever see it but the perception has been planted in their minds.

Recently I agreed to a coworkers post about our boss keeping us late and it being his fault. The boss saw it. It has been rumoured he has gone to hr with it. He hasn’t said anything. It’s going on almost 2 weeks but I find it suspicious that this hasn’t even been discussed, not even with the original poster as our company takes fb posts very seriously. Do you think I can be fired for agreeing with the post?

… agree with your all above said facts..but here I would like to say something which I have faced during my 8 years of IT admin experience, I worked for diverse fields and found that IT has reached in its peaks (no one can escapes it’s impact ,people have to follow it, but should be carefully )…but the end-user are neither ready to learned about its basics nor they can escape from luring features of social media specially. They are just up to CLICK. And if you try to warn them about its harms, they just ignore it, like who is going to check my profile, or what will happen with my images on my profile!
The question is why these type of end-user are not ready to understand it seriously..So I found it, these people are just forced to work, just for sake their of life..Rather than they don’t want to take IT basics seriously, At least this era can not be expected for the same..

Hey there, it may have to do with the rest of your settings – for example if your posts are able to be seen by friends of friends? Or else someone just may have shown them who is still on your friends list.

I won’t have anyone on my Facebook page that i don’t know in person. I only have personal friends that i know very well no one else. I know one friend that has over 1000 Facebook friends and she wouldn’t know if any of them knows someone she would work with. I have only 25 people that i have on Facebook and they i know in person.

Remove your co-workers from your facebook, and tell them once you have done it that you are being pier pressured into it by people you don’t know on the internet…

OR… just remove them from your friends list and when they ask you why, either tell them the cold hard truth (that you really didn’t intend to be friends with them on facebook and it makes you uncomfortable. If they get offended ask them why it is a big deal to them, make sure you are your regular diplomatic self), or lie through your teeth and hope not to get caught… just remember a lie can always come back around to bite you in the butt.

What is the difference of putting it on Facebook or saying it out loud! It’s bullshit that you can lose your job because you disagree or don’t like someone! I have the right to tell my friends and family back home about my day. Yes I just got fired today because I voiced my thoughts on facebook! Now I’m wishing I would have said something allot worse than what I did say, witch was liking a link is all! So fuck you Advance Services and fuck you Pam Jodi and Bryan both Bryans you fucking two faced. So fuck you all!

Sorry to hear that. Unfortunately the difference between saying it and putting it on Facebook is that the Facebook post/like is easily proven – ie. if you say something you can deny it ever happened but if you have it on Facebook there’s written proof. Hope you’ve managed to get a new (and better) job now (and be more careful in the future!!)

just set up a friends list within FB – call it co-workers, and then when you post something, you can choose which sub-group of friends can see it. You can select who sees which photo-albums too. It does have the potential to go wrong, but it can be handy to group your friends in a more thorough way.

In the event that you do lose your job and you’re applying for a new one, you can always FBstalk the interviewer and pretend to like the same bands as they do, it might get you the job… Although i would like to point out that stalking is bad and the act of gaining a financial advantage through deception is illegal and punishable by law. just sayin’

Haha Melissa, I love your thinking about stalking the stalkers and liking what they like… what a funny tactic. I’m sure it would work for some people, but it does require some serious dedication Thanks for the comment.

I hate facebook and going to a job and doing what I am supposed to do then seeing the person next to me on facebook. Then having my supervisor *a friend of the person on facebook saying I’m not right for the company. Please stop.

I’m retired at 50 yeah . I like facebook and hate it both at the same time. Im not a pedofile or evil and i have said things i was ashamed off and have regreted saying those things. I worked for a large Satelitte Radio company yrs ago and they said you can go thru our servers so you dont have to pay. I told them thanks but nothanks. I knew then it was a bad idea

I work as a support worker I’m being investigated by work because I replied back to a collegue saying I couldn’t support Fi (short for the persons name) they are trying to get me on breach of confidentiality can they do that if I havnt said the persons full name or anything about them

Well, it is truth that companies and bosses are more and more worried of social networks, yet sometime the fire can reach them: in some cases some companies that had fired employee because of comments about the companies themselves, had to face bad publicity for months and months with damages often worth tens of times higher than the salary of the employee fired.

Indeed, it is very difficult to operate in the mediatic world today. Bosses and companies, many of them, are still in the 1900s, thinking only about unions and lawyer issues, but today the real problem may arrive from the social networks themselves.

Just an example, a company sucked three employees for a party photo on FB. These were rather popular people with between 2000-3000 friends each. The effect was instantaneous: the company received nearly 3000 fax and emails, local newspaper interviewed the employees that now, fired, were free to speak of the horrible working environment and corruption existing in the work palce , a website was developed where other employees could vent in anonymous way the anger and support their colleagues: FBs, Tweeter, blogs… the company was assaulted and could only provide a media release here and there. To make the story short, the manager that sacked the employees was sucked and all the manager line revised. The cost to the company in image, revenue and resources was extremely high, surely not worth the first action that started such a disaster. Hence, employers must think very carefully about social networks and their power: the world is changed.

Hiya, I am really glad I have found this info. Nowadays bloggers publish only about gossips and net and this is really irritating. A good website with exciting content, this is what I need. Thanks for keeping this web-site, I will be visiting it. Do you do newsletters? Can not find it.

Hi. Unfortunately it is a true fact that companies do check out a potential candidates social networking. Companies want to protect their brand not look into the personal details of what an employee is or is not doing.

My daughter sent me a post on a facebook page of one of her girlfriends boyfriend who works at WOOLLIES.What he said was extremely offensive toward wollies customers and I wish to report him to the manager but my daughter my loose her girlfriend as his page is only privately shared and his friends all liked his comments! if he found it was me who complained, then my daughter would suffer. however, she was really offended and hurt by what he said as it hit a nerve withe her and something that had occured in her past and I was offended by the disgusting, bigoted nature of what he said and the fact he hurt my daughter. I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO.

All of my friends have there settings on there Facebook friends as just friends and don’t use aquantces settings. i use close friends with some friends and others i use friends and others i use aquantces and they can’t see much on your Facebook page and things that have been said and work mates should go under aquantces and don’t have someone as a Facebook friend if you don’t know them. I won’t ask someone as a Facebook friend that i have never met at all. I have about 25 Facebook friends. I don’t let my relatives put down as aquantces so they can’t much at all and they are more likely to talk about things to others and personal friends are the best to keep things private.

The safest way is just have only personal friends as Facebook friends and don’t have work mates as Facebook friends and people that you don’t know and you can setup your page where they can’t request as a Facebook friend and also you can hide where no one can’t look you up but you can look them up.

Just a heads up to all people that use anything on the internet at work. I have worked IT networking and security for more years than I am going to admit here. EVERYTHING you do can (and usually is) tracked. Your ID, and every click you hit (and those you don’t know you are hitting – your computer is) are tracked and can be reported in a neat little report very quickly. NEVER come to the attention of the IT staff.

I made a stupid racist comment about a racist comment posted by a stranger that was forwarded to me. Realizing how awful it was, I immediately deleted it from the Facebook chat. I also asked FB to delete the offensive post. FB sent back the post to the offender and asked if he wanted to comment-with my racist quote included. Lucky for me, he had thousands of twitter and FB followers and told them to inundate my work and home with “violent homosexual images” and complaints. They showed up on the public FB site at work, blew up my phone with threats against my life and of course, I was fired. It had nothing to do with work-nothing. And the guy was also a radio personality-so you know how that went. When my company called to ask if I was hacked-which I guess I could have lied-it was being talked about ON THE LOCAL MORNING RADIO SHOW! So really people, FB and social networking is just bad. Read a book or something.

I made a comment about how poor tippers who return to the same restaurants should expect lower quality service, for they are tampering with someone’s paycheck. Someone apparently didn’t like this comment, stalked my Facebook posts to find out where I work (apparently for six months, since the post and my mention of where I work are nearly six months apart) and wrote a nasty email to my boss. They decided to terminate me immediately, even without my knowledge, I was told to clock out midshift and only to return for my paycheck come next Friday. I have had a four month no mistake record with my work, no write ups, never called in sick or was late, and have many regulars who constantly give me good reviews on our company survey, yet some anonymous sniper who stalked my Facebook can get me fired from a small complaint I had about a certain type of customer? I hope she knows she ruined my paycheck to paycheck stability, and my daughter is going to suffer from the lack of money in the process of finding another job. Thanks Snowy a Snowflake (the name she went by in the email). This whole situation makes no sense to me. My Facebook is private. For friends, and I’m not on anyone’s bad side, to my knowledge. Who in their right mind does this to people? This is seriously messed up,

That sounds very unfortunate Anthony, sorry to hear about your situation. It might even be someone who is one of your ‘friends’ but wishes you ill for some reason or another. It is a good example of how you think you are posting something in a ‘personal’ forum but these days there really is no such thing when it comes to the Internet! I hope you managed to find a new job quickly.

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Hi there, my name is Cara Pring, welcome to The Social Skinny, a website dedicated to social media and website optimization strategy. If you want simple, jargon-free tips and updates, you've come to the right place! Outside the geeky expert stuff I'm a crazy cat lady from Sydney - and no, that is not me in the header (everyone asks). You can find out more about me in the About page or you can connect with me on Twitter, FB, LinkedIn & G+. Thanks for stopping by :)
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